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A week at Cambell Park

Cambell Park is the large park adjacent to central Milton Keynes and conveniently, the canal runs right along side it. This makes for a very pleasant country mooring spot, with a brisk 30 walk through the trees into the ratzamataz of the huge shopping centre.

Probably a good thing it’s not any closer, cause I find those palaces of commercialism infuriatingly both enticing and overpowering at the same time. Luckily I’m good at window shopping. I didn’t think this beautiful carousel would fit on the boat.

We are so content with our lot living on Firecrest that we have little need or desire to aquire bigger better sparklier even if it does come with a massive black Friday sales ticket. I will admit to enjoying the food hall in M&S. We had ‘lunch’ there thanks to all the free samples they kept tempting us with.

We were very tempted with the fold up Brompton Bikes and even took them for a spin around the park but as I like walking and Eric likes cycling fast we’re not sure that they’re the right bikes for us.

The park really is lovely and well used. It reminded me a bit of New York’s central park. With both natural and formal areas and with dedicated recreational and enterainment arenas. All enhanced by Milton Keynes love of sculpture and art. We walked with both purpose and for pleasure, exploring cause we weren’t sure what we’d see around the next corner.

This is the light pyramid. We don’t think it does anything technical to light up except glow in the natural sunset and sunrise. It seems to be at the highest point of MK. And we could certainly see for miles.

This area is know as the MK Rose Each pillar is marked with a date that celebrates or remembers an event. There’s a mix of nostalgic, historical, serious and light hearted pillars. My favourite being international knit in public day!

I forgot to look at the name of this totem pole

but this one is known as chain reaction.

And for some reason this is the Head.

There were several other sculptures, not all to my liking so they didn’t get a photo.

We were listening to a discussion on radio 4 this week, the panel was debating how towns could encourage their residents to be fitter. We were amazed to hear one comment that as an experiment MK new town had failed miserably because you were stumped if you didn’t have a car. They proposed incorporating obstical courses on pavements so when people went to do their shopping they they’d be more challenged…. Well that certainly increased my heart rate. I doubt they’d ever carried the weekly shop with a toddler and a pushchair. And as for MK ignoring pedestrians, how wrong they are, it has been an absolute joy being able to walk for miles without having to cross a major road. If town planners followed MK’s example and built houses around parkland and included dedicated footpaths and cycle ways, the thought of leaving the car behind would be far more appealing.